Out
A series about Mars
by Daniel
E. Machado
Chapter 10
Suspended from an anchor-point near the
crowded shuttle bay's main gantry complex Ship’s Lieutenant John Forrest
glances back and forth between the off-loading passengers and his handtablet
display.
Two-thousand new names, two-thousand
new faces.
He sighs.
As one of the SS Flying Jib's
senior communications officers John's primary function entails maintaining
the ship's passenger net. After the Jib leaves Earth orbit the ship's
central communications hub will be the passenger's only access to outside
nets until their pod falls into orbit around Mars. At some point during
the next sixteen months Lieutenant Forrest will almost certainly have to
deal with all two-thousand of them and has found that identifying the problems
at the very beginning saves the communications crews an immense amount
of time and frustration. He's also found that matching up names and profiles
to the faces and behaviors of the off-loading immigrants to be the fastest
way of accomplishing this. He even plays a little game with himself to
make the task more interesting. Displaying text only Fred tries to match
up the offloading passengers with the name's and outline-bio on his display.
Once he decides he checks the name's ID holo to see if he’s correct. The
last shuttle he scored about sixty percent. His best ever was a seventy-three
point six.
"Huh?" John's head shakes down at
one of the names on the next shuttle just docking.
"No way."
Just then a small child’s squeal pierces
the air as across at the gantry lock in floats a beautiful blonde woman
in her mid-twenties with a small blonde child harnessed to her chest.
"It can’t be." Still disbelieving
what he's seeing John quickly punches up a full profile on this shuttle's
the only single woman traveling with a child.
"I’ll be damned."
It must have been four, maybe five,
years ago just after his first circuit around Mars. His mother had insisted
he attend his brother’s wedding in his dress uniform. It made John feel
like a total geek, but his mother had been so proud of him after that first
circuit that he just hadn't the heart to deny her. Blade DeSilva had been
one of the many younger female cousins and sisters that had populated the
bride’s side of the family. She must have been something like eighteen
or nineteen, and apparently a bit infatuated with his uniform. Something
that at the time had struck John as very odd. The girl herself had been
dressed in some sort of cross between Glam-Flash and Punk-Trash with a
little bit of Nashville thrown in. At the time John remembers thinking
that a uniform should have been extremely uncool to the girl. Uniforms
had always reminded John of a more conservative turn-on, and conservative
is not a term that he would have ever applied to Blade DeSilva. The sudden
image of green tattooed ivy climbing up from the inside of Blade's left
thigh and across her stomach to curl up under her right breast as the girl
spins naked on the dance-floor instantly flashes into John’s mind. He shakes
his head to dislodge it. Across the gantry bay John watches as a man float
in behind her guiding one wardrobe and two of personal-effects lockers.
Again he consults his handtablet.
"Fred Davis, huh? Yah, I remember
him too. Younger guy. We talked. Crazy for the Belt."
Their extended-family profile dates
from last week and shows no marriage contract. Across the crowded bay John
watches as the three move off toward one of the lifts.
Maybe I should look them up. I
don’t really know them that well, but a little company on the outbound
leg might be nice. Besides, they're both sort of related and she’s still
sort of… gorgeous.